Asia

Asia is the largest and most populated continent. It has nearly one-third of the world’s total land area and is home to more than half of Earth’s people. It also has impressive geographical features. It has Earth’s highest point (Mount Everest) and lowest point (the Dead Sea). Asia also includes some of the world’s wettest, driest, hottest, and coldest places. The continent was the home of the great early civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Indus River valley. The world’s major religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism—all began in Asia as well. Today, though many people are farmers and live in small villages, Asia also has enormous cities, including some of the world’s largest: Beijing, China; Tokyo, Japan; Seoul, South Korea; and Delhi, India.

With an area of more than 17 million square miles (44 million square kilometers), Asia stretches from the Arctic Ocean to the Equator. It is bounded to the east by the Pacific Ocean, to the south by the Indian Ocean, to the southwest by the Mediterranean and Black seas, and to the west by Europe. In the southwest, a narrow isthmus, or neck of land, joins Asia to Africa. The boundary between Europe and Asia is generally considered to lie along the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea. The Ural Mountains run through Russia, so Russia is partly in Asia and partly in Europe. In the southeast, the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, as well as many smaller islands, are parts of Asia.

Because Asia is so vast and varied, it is often discussed in terms of regions. The regions are defined in different ways by different people. Sometimes they are based on geography, sometimes on political boundaries, and sometimes on shared cultural traits. In general, however, the continent can be grouped into six broad regions. They are: Southwest, South, Southeast, East, North, and central Asia. Southwest Asia consists mainly of countries on or near the Arabian Peninsula, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and Israel. Most of Turkey is also included in this group. (Some of Turkey is considered part of Europe.) The countries of Southwest Asia are also part of a region known as the Middle East. Much of the land in Southwest Asia is desert.

The main geographic features of South, Southeast, and East Asia are great mountains, high plains, and islands. India and Pakistan are major countries in South Asia; Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam are in Southeast Asia; and China, Japan, and North and South Korea are in East Asia.

Northern Asia, also called Siberia, is part of Russia. Siberia has mostly frozen plains and swampy forest. Because of the extreme cold, few people live there. Most of central Asia consists of desert, but in the north are vast grasslands.

Mountains

The Himalayas, in southern Asia, include Mount Everest, on the border between China and Nepal. Mount Everest is 29,035 feet (8,850 meters) high. Also in the Himalayas, K2 is the world’s second-highest peak at 28,251 feet (8,611 meters). Other major ranges include the Hindu Kush, which runs southwest through Afghanistan; the Tian Shan in the northeast; and the Altai in the north.

Rivers and Seas

The longest river in Asia is the Yangtze in China. At 3,915 miles (6,300 kilometers) long, the Yangtze is also the third longest river in the world, after the Nile and the Amazon. Another major river is the Huang He, or Yellow River, also in China. The Ob River in the Asian part of Russia is a long river that flows through Siberia and empties into the Arctic Ocean. In India the Ganges River is important because it is surrounded by highly populated places and is considered holy by the Hindu Indians. In southeastern Asia are the Mekong and Irrawaddy Rivers. The Indus River in South Asia and the Tigris and Euphrates in southwestern Asia were the sites of some of the world’s earliest civilizations. Asia also contains the world’s largest inland sea, the Caspian Sea.

Because of the wide variety of climates and physical features, there are many types of plants. In northern Siberia lichens, mosses, and some wildflowers grow. To the south are evergreen forests and grasslands. China has the most varied vegetation of any country in the world. Palm trees and bamboo grow in the southern parts of China, South Korea, and Japan. In South and Southeast Asia rainforest is the main natural vegetation, though large areas of trees have been cut down to make room for farming. In the mountains of Southwest Asia there are forests of beech trees, evergreens, hollies, and creepers.

Many different groups of people live in Asia. Arabs, Jews, Iranians, and Turks are among the peoples of Southwest Asia. South Asia is home to Indian peoples. Southeast Asia’s many peoples and cultures have been influenced by India and China. The main peoples in East Asia are the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. Northern Asia includes various Asian groups, as well as Russians and other Europeans.

Throughout the 20th century, as Asia became more industrial, people moved from villages into towns and cities, where they hoped to find work and better services for their families. By the end of the 1990s at least 90 percent of the people in such countries as Kuwait, Israel, and Singapore lived in cities. In China, Vietnam, and Nepal, however, less than 40 percent lived in cities. The lives of some groups of people had hardly changed for centuries. Yet others saw their countries change greatly in a short space of time due to the arrival of Western culture and industrial methods. One of the problems faced by Asia at the beginning of the 21st century was the fast rate at which its population was increasing. This population increase caused problems such as food, housing, and land shortages for the Asian people.

Hundreds of different languages can be heard throughout the continent. More than 250 languages are spoken in Indonesia alone. Some of the most widely used languages in Asia include Arabic, which is spoken in parts of Southwest Asia; Hindi, spoken in India; and Chinese (Mandarin), spoken in China. Russian, English, and French are also spoken.

The world’s major religions—Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—all started in Asia. Today, many people in Southeast and East Asia follow Buddhism. Hinduism is the main religion in India and Nepal, while Islam is practiced in much of Southwest Asia and in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Judaism is the main religion in Israel. Christianity is practiced throughout the continent, but only in the Philippines, Russia, and Armenia is it the main religion.

Israel, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea have excellent education and health care systems. But most of the rest of Asia is still developing. The living standards of many people are behind those in the Western world. In general, problems with nutrition are common. Health and education services are limited and are generally more available in cities than in rural areas.

Asia has one of the world’s richest countries as well as some of the poorest. The economy of Japan is by far the most advanced in Asia. As other countries have worked to develop industries and other sources of income, they have prospered as well. Nepal and some of the nations of central Asia are still among the poorest in the world. As a whole, however, Asia experienced steady economic growth through the last decades of the 20th century.

Agriculture is an important part of the economy in many Asian countries. In much of Asia the main food crop is rice. Wheat is important in parts of northern, central, Southwest, and South Asia. Crops grown for sale include tea, sugarcane, coconuts, and rubber. Sheep and goats are raised for meat and wool in most of Asia. China, Japan, Indonesia, India, and Russia catch large amounts of fish.

Asia has large reserves of almost every important mineral. The continent has more than half the world’s reserves of coal, mostly in China, Siberia, and India. Major deposits of oil are found in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. Asia also produces large amounts of iron ore, cast iron, tin, tungsten, and refined zinc.

Asia’s industrialized areas, including Japan, South Korea, the island of Taiwan, and Singapore, make a wide variety of products. China and parts of South and Southeast Asia began developing their manufacturing in the late 1900s. South and Southeast Asia produce traditional goods such as textiles as well as technology products such as computers. Oil and gas are processed in Southwest and central Asia.

Thousands of years ago Asia was home to three of the world’s first civilizations. Sometime after about 8000 bc, people who had roamed around the region as hunters and gatherers began to settle in one place and farm the land. These farmers eventually joined together to form societies. They developed written languages and built large cities. The first such society developed in Southwest Asia in a region called Mesopotamia in about 3500–3000 bc. A civilization developed in the Indus River valley in what is now Pakistan by about 2500 bc. Historians believe that Chinese civilization began in about 2500 bc as well.

Over time these civilizations changed as they were taken over by other groups. The Mesopotamian kingdoms became part of the Greek and Persian worlds. In the ad 600s Islam was founded in Arabia. Arab Muslims took over Mesopotamia and then moved into other parts of Asia.

The Indus Valley civilization died out in about 1700 bc. At about this same time, a people known as Aryans invaded what is now India. Their religion eventually evolved into Hinduism. The Mauryan Empire united South Asia in about 300 bc, though others eventually took over from them. In the late ad 1100s Muslim rulers took over part of the region.

Chinese culture dominated East Asia. China was ruled by a series of dynasties for many thousands of years, from about the 1700s bc to the ad 1900s. The Mongols, a people from Northern and central Asia, ruled much of Asia during the ad 1200s and 1300s.

To take control of Asia’s vast wealth, Europeans conquered many Asian countries and made them into colonies in the 1800s. By the end of World War II, the colonies began to seek independence. India became free of British rule in 1947. France fought to keep control of its colonies in Southeast Asia but finally withdrew from the region in 1954. Most central Asian countries were part of the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union. They became independent after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

China also underwent major changes. In 1912 the last dynasty came to an end, and the country became a republic. China’s government became Communist after Communists won a civil war in 1949. Communists in Korea and Vietnam also fought for control of those countries. The Korean War, from 1950 to 1953, resulted in the separation of Korea into two countries: North Korea and South Korea. North Korea had a Communist government, but South Korea did not. The Vietnam War ended in 1975 with Vietnam united under a Communist government.

In 1948 the country of Israel was created in the Middle East as a homeland for the Jewish people. Arab countries opposed the creation of Israel, however, and they and the Israelis fought a series of wars. Southwest Asia was the site of several other conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), the Persian Gulf War (1991), and a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq (2003).

In the last half of the 1900s, many Asian countries had to deal with problems left over from the period of European rule. The boundaries of the European colonies did not always match the natural divisions of peoples, cultures, and physical regions. When the colonies gained independence they kept those boundaries, but there were often tensions between the people who had been forced to live together. At the same time, however, many Asian countries worked hard to improve their economies.

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